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July 28 - August 3, 2025
rare thing—Osric had no intentions of stabbing anyone. He was here to play nice.
It took him two hours, but he triggered no wards, and didn’t kill anyone. Champion.
Osric did not kill him. He wished to make a decent first impression on Fairhrim, after all, and so he merely concussed the man and tucked him neatly under his own desk.
(if he had to sit like a spod, he would, at least, look sinister while he did it)
if an irritated tornado could be said to enter an office.
Osric was annoyed; the onions had spoiled his aura of menace.
He pushed his hood back a little, so that she could see a bit of the Face. He tilted his head so that his cheekbone caught the light. His cleft chin clefted majestically.
He hit her with a grin (devilish) and a wink (suggestive).
accompanied by a raised eyebrow (sportive).
there would be no more seductive sallies here. Her type was, evidently, not dark and dangerous.
He knew a lost cause when he saw one, and Aurienne Fairhrim was a lost cause.
Also if he hadn’t mucked about with attempting to flirt with her, but he preferred not to take responsibility for things.
“Kidnap it is,” said Osric. He rose, poured the onions onto the floor, and flapped the empty sack at Fairhrim. “Get in.”
“Did you try the adult cupboard?” asked Fairhrim.
Aurienne enjoyed penises and vulvas equally, but penises seemed, as a general rule, more prone to unasked-for exposures, which was too bad, because they weren’t as pretty as vulvas—except, perhaps, for the glossy candied ones in the shop upstairs.
He certainly giggled a lot about anuses for a thing that had crawled out of one.
She said, “We don’t have to like it.” Osric made no answer. He already liked it. He hated that he liked it.
He hated that he had come to the waystone whole but left it having lost a piece of himself in two star-brilliant eyes.
“There’s fuckery underway,”
And he shadow-walked to the only dark places in the room: their insides. The first man burst in a wet, bloody slurry as Mordaunt materialised in his chest
They named the kitten Acts of Warranted Brutality.
Mordaunt’s eyes were closed. His voice had gone soft; he was fading into sleep. “I’d do it if you wanted to—” “I don’t want to.” “—but I’d really rather be suffocated by your thighs.”
He had just thrown my mother into a wall. He went for my throat; I went for his. Mother never woke up. Father died by my hand. I was fourteen years old.”
Then came the tender apocalypse of his lips on hers.
